The Subjection of Women

About the book

Mill challenges the principle that social relations between women and men should be organised through the legal authority of one over the other. He examines marriage, education, custom, and the claims made about natural capacities when people have not been free to develop them. The argument repeatedly questions whether long acceptance proves justice or merely demonstrates the power of an established arrangement. It also connects individual liberty with the wider loss of abilities that exclusion prevents society from using. Readers encounter a sustained attempt to turn apparently familiar institutions into subjects requiring reasons. The essay's force comes from its insistence that conclusions about what people can or should do cannot fairly be drawn from conditions designed to limit their opportunities beforehand.

• Equality
• Liberty
• Custom and evidence

Why read it

For a clear, sustained challenge to arguments that treat the results of inequality as proof that inequality is necessary.

English text